Geoff Gallop and fundies getting in the mood for Australia Day ...

If it's all the same to Geoff Gallop and his pious hope for a broader dialogue and understanding between the sane and fundamentalists, as outlined in A fundamental attack on pragmatic values, dare the pond say that fundamentally the fundamentalists can just fuck off. And make sure they close the screen door to keep out the flies and mosquitoes as they leave.

Oh dear, there we go again, being absolutist in quite the wrong way.

Never mind, I'm sure Mr Gallop means well, and the pond's relentless campaign to abolish all institutionalised religion will have as much chance of success as his desire for dialogue with fundamentalists, seeing as how they've been around for millenia and take their inspiration from the Supreme Fundamentalist, sometimes known to others as god ...

After all, dividing the alleged afterlife into heaven or hell (and make sure you shut screen door on your way in so that the blowflies and mosquitoes can keep you company for eternity) is about as binary computer myopic as you can get, and never mind the attempts to soften the blow with limbo and purgatory. In the end, it's black or white, heaven or hell, and to hell with the hindmost ...

Speaking of the fundamentalists, there's no one more fundamental than market place fundamentalists, and they find a merry perch on which to sit and whistle their tune in The Australian.

So we find Rob Whelan, chief executive of the Insurance Council of Australia, explaining why everyone needs to take out full insurance in Forget about a flood levy. Conflict of interest?Moi?

Remember how the commentariat has been blithely assuring anyone who'll listen that this the recent floods are just part of nature's cycle, and have been around for at least two hundred years (and who knows, maybe anymore). We had to sit through an interminable address to the nation from Gerard Henderson on this very point, but it seems only now has Rob Whelan discovered that floods might be happening:

The industry has shown its ability to bring flood products to market. Provide insurers with the necessary data and the industry will respond by developing new and innovative flood products.

Oh go wash out your mouth with a dummy's guide to marketing 101, all that talk of new and innovative flood products doesn't turn me on.

But yes, once again the solution to all of the private sector's problems resides with .... government.

The key to this whole debate is for governments at all levels to agree on how to fund a national flood mapping project. Such a project will ensure consistency and also provide updated mapping data for every residential address in the country.

If it's so important, and if you cared so much, and it's vital to setting policy prices, why not do it yourself?

No, no, no, it's all to do with government, which naturally has been derelict. The industry is standing ready with fresh products, suh!

Meanwhile, Alan Moran, he that calls himself director of the deregulation unit at the Institute of Public Affairs, spends an entire column, Energy sector wilts under solar stress, explaining how it's vital for us to keep on burning coal as vigorously as we can ...

Anything but anything than subsidise the solar sector. Naturally it's all the fault of the government.

Climate change? Let them eat coal cake ...

Was it only three years ago that Deborah Smith scribbled Australia's carbon dioxide emissions twice world rate?

Australia has 0.32 per cent of the world's population, yet produces 1.43 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions. This means that, per person, pollution levels are 4.5 times the global average, just below the value for the United States, the analysis shows.

Hah, that's nothing, give Al Moran his head, and we'll quadruple that within the decade ... as he celebrates Australia's "arguably the world's most efficient electricity supply industry" without a jot or whit of care in regard to the derelict, aged, wretched, coal burning, carbon dioxide belching plants beavering away around the country ... and carbon capture and geosequestration still an idle dream ...

Meanwhile, The Punch has decided to go pinko pervert liberal. There's Mal Farr scribbling heresy in You can't take climate change out of the flood equation, and bringing forth a host of fundamentalist deniers, clinging to their one true faith and showing the depth of ratbaggery The Punch has managed to attract as a loyal bunch of readers in its short time on the blogosphere.

Reading the comments section is like sinking into a bath full of slightly off goat's milk and inanity.

Farr dares to provide a link to a Queensland Government site, last updated November 12th 2010 which dared to say:

The Inland Flooding Study partnership with the Local Government Association of Queensland (LGAQ) was designed to improve Queensland’s resilience to extreme flood events due to climate change. Flooding causes significant impacts on Queensland communities and the economy – and with our changing climate, extreme flooding events are likely to become more intense.

The project was established to recommend options to increase community resilience to extreme flood events by providing:

* a recommended climate change factor for use by local councils in future flood studies
* specific policy options for improved flood risk management in the Gayndah case study area
* recommendations for inclusion in the review of the State Planning Policy 1/03 Mitigating the Adverse Impacts of Flood, Bushfire and Landslide.

Outrageous heresy, and naturally the fundamentalists came out in droves. What? Climate change? Doesn't The Australian assure us on an almost daily basis that it's a chimera, a myth, and now someone's let Farr out of his Murdoch cage? And yet the sweet lad was hesitant, cautious, reticent, just suggesting maybe and perhaps we should think about it, and still they monstered the poor boy ...

Naturally they also turned out to monster David Koch's What I hate about Australia Day.

Now it's the inclination of the pond to think of Kochie as a kind of amiable, television personality boofhead, but here he strays dangerously into heresy:

I hate blonde-haired, blue-eyed yobbos prancing about in the Australian flag who intimidate people who don’t look like them.

I hate the drunk bloke who told me in Chinatown the other night that I had the personality of a rubber glove (fair enough, that’s his view) but then turns to my Sri Lankan-born son-in-law and says the problem with this country is “the coloureds”.

Yes, we've all seen the ugly side of Australia, and nowhere was it more visible than in the responses in The Punch. Berating the man for being too gutless to get into a fist fight in response, or being full of self-loathing, or yes you guessed it decrying the guilt industry which he somehow represents ...

Which brings us back to Gerard Henderson starting off the day by renouncing guilt and assuring us all how everything is hunky dory in this brave, lotos-eating fair land ...

Not if you read the rabid, check that dog for rabies, comments in The Punch.

The fundamentalists are in full cry in the usual way on the pond, so all we can think to say to Geoff Gallop and his desire for a conversation with fundamentalists, good luck with that Geoff, and why don't you try a little trolling on The Punch ... the worse that can happen is that the fundamentalists will send in blistering attacks on your weak-kneed, craven, lily-livered ways ...

(Below: feel caught in the old binary bind? There are so many of them).